


Shadows and Roses

by furrylittlebantha



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:47:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22645870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furrylittlebantha/pseuds/furrylittlebantha
Summary: There was one room where nobody ever went but him.A new maid once made the mistake of going inside to dust it. A passing droid informed another maid, who informed the head housekeeper, who informed the trespasser that she would be packed off if Lord Vader ever found out. Or killed; the head housekeeper had many colorful stories to share of the master’s fury and was more than happy to share them.“Before you go,” she said at last, manner suddenly hesitant, “Tell me…what was inside?”Post-Revenge of the Sith; the man who was once Anakin Skywalker remembers, and mourns.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	Shadows and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted several years ago on another site; consolidating here for archival purposes.
> 
> For reference, note that this was written long before the Disney acquisition, way back in the days when the Expanded Universe was canon.

=================

There must be a place  
a room and a sanctuary  
set apart for silence  
for shadows and roses

  
\--excerpt from "Alone and Not Alone" by Carl Sandburg

================

There was one room where nobody ever went but him.

A new maid once made the mistake of going inside to dust it. A passing droid informed another maid, who informed the head housekeeper, who informed the trespasser that she would be packed off if Lord Vader ever found out. Or killed; the head housekeeper had many colorful stories to share of the master’s fury and was more than happy to share them.

“Before you go,” she said at last, manner suddenly hesitant, “Tell me…what was inside?”

But the maid was crying too hard to answer.

During the five years she worked at Bast Castle, no one ever induced her to reveal what she saw in that forbidden room. After five years a mechanic got her pregnant and she went home to live with her mother. So the mystique of the room continued without interruption, for years and years, until everyone ceased to think of it anymore.

As time passed, the master of the house went to the room less and less. There came a time when he did not go in it all, and the door panel became coated with a fine fuzz of dust. As far as the staff was concerned, there was no room. Only an irregular bit of wall to avoid in one’s stretch of cleaning.

Then quite suddenly, a decade or more later, Lord Vader entered the room again. He stayed inside for nearly an entire day. Calls came from the fleet and from Coruscant, but no one had the courage to knock on that irregular bit of wall. Who knew what he might do if disturbed? Far better to risk the distant wrath of an admiral than the all-too present rage of the master.

After that day, rumors cropped up once more about the room no one had ever seen. New staff members were educated in low whispers; old stories drifted like ghosts through the halls, new ones springing to life behind. A popular one suggested he kept body parts of victims on shelves, a trophy room. There were even grislier versions, but these seemed gratuitous and unlikely to seasoned denizens of the castle. The second assistant gardener suggested he kept the light-sabers of vanquished opponents hanging on the walls. This speculation even had a smidge of circumstantial evidence backing it up: hadn’t Rask-Enna, the new maid in that hall, seen Lord Vader enter the room with a long, slender container? On no less than two occasions!

Still, alternatives persisted. The young men privately had ideas of their own, too lewd to share with anyone but themselves. The young women were baffled altogether. They would have liked to imagine him dreaming of a long-lost love, but that was too ridiculous even for them. The old women thought he might keep a shrine to the deity of his childhood. The old men pretended not to care at all. But they told stories in the half-light of evening; stories of a republic, a thousand-year old order, heroes without fear and wars no one remembered anymore. What does that have to do with anything? The old women asked. The old men shrugged.

The last day Lord Vader ever set foot in the room, he did not come out for many hours. Then he left Vjun without speaking to anyone. His shuttle flew off into the night like a great black bird, never to return. The next day Bast Castle received word of the rout at Endor. Lord Vader was dead. Emperor Palpatine was dead. The Empire was dead, too. People looked at each other in confusion. When they saw that nobody around them knew more than they did, everyone looked at the head housekeeper.

“That’s it, then,” she said at last. “It’s done.” And she unpinned the badge from her ample chest, the shiny silver badge proclaiming her authority.

The master had not named an heir for Bast Castle among his legal documents. No one knew quite what to do with the private residence of Darth Vader. So it was locked up, and those who had maintained it for two decades scattered among the galaxy, and the droids were sold. The head housekeeper was the last of them all to leave. It was very quiet. The long corridors and vast, empty halls echoed with a silence that pressed and chilled. She wandered here and there, idling at this or that corner, remembering. But neither Bast Castle nor the head housekeeper was fooled by her erratic path. She had remained behind for one reason and one reason alone. By and by, her footsteps led her to that inevitable place.

The door.

Tremblingly, she laid a hand on the door panel. Her touch disturbed the soft dust and it puffed up in a cloud about her fingers. She stood there for a long time, breath coming quick and ragged.

Then, abruptly, her hand came off the panel, and she gathered her thick skirts and marched off resolutely. Once she hesitated, twenty paces away. But it was only for an instant. The head housekeeper left out a small side door and locked it securely behind her. A small shuttle took her away that evening. Six months later, working as a librarian on Teardrop, she ran into the second assistant gardener and married him. Neither of them ever mentioned their former place of employment again—except to me, but that is another matter.

Year after year the castle stood alone and empty, a towering black skeleton on the cliffs of Vjun. Eventually all those who once knew it began to lose their faculties and die. Its memory moldered with the other relics of that dark time. The house of Darth Vader—a fable, surely, a legend. Even if it did exist, who knew where to find it? More relevantly, who cared? The era of great lords and their palaces was long dead. This was the era of freedom for all. Let the bones of the sleeping dead lie still.

What was inside that room where nobody ever went but him? Who will ever know? I will tell you what I think. I think there was nothing in that room, nothing at all but shadows of a past half-forgotten. And roses: piles of them, some brown and crumbling with decay, some full and ripe and red and crisp, the roses of a lover. I think the long, slender case Rask-Enna saw carried flowers into the room. I think the young men were right; I think he remembered there, in the silence; memories of smooth hot flesh and tangled sheets. I think the old women were right, too. I think it was a shrine—to the only deity he ever knew, to an angel, fair and pure and everlastingly young. I think the old men were right, even more than the young men and old women. I think republics and heroes without fear had more to do with the room than anyone guessed.

But you know, I think the young women were the most right of all.

\--Dr. Moria Ai Ni Braun, Historian  
Speculations on the Empire of Mystery  
Volume 1

=================


End file.
